The Big Fight
by LifeIChose
Summary: He doesn't want her but he still won't let her go. She's started breaking but she still won't let it show. BLP. ***Repost - Edited Version***


**Author's Note**: I'm not really sure where this came from at all. Song Credit goes to Stars whose title and lyrics I am using. Listening to the song was the inspiration and somehow I came out with this. It was a weird thing for me to write, delving into the BLP triangle from Peyton's perspective is a departure from anything I have ever done since so often she is my least favourite character. Really interested in any feedback: the good, the bad, the ugly. I'll take it if it is constructive.

Oh yeah, I don't own anything.

**EDIT**: I am reposting this after a great constructive review that the paragraphs were too long to read. I have looked at it a couple of times since that review but just now got around to making a few changes. I didn't change anything of the original story other than separating some of the long paragraphs into shorter ones.

* * *

_How could you do it_

_**I couldn't say**_

_Years built on sand_

**June until May**

_Second to Second_

_Lied even while you held my hand_

It had been an accident. Really she hadn't been looking for it. Somewhere in the back of her mind she had somehow known that it or something like it existed and she had never wanted to find it. Out of sight, out of mind. It made it easier to pretend. To continue living a life that deep down she had always known was a lie.

The box she had stumbled upon as she searched the attic for her old high school drawings, the ones that he had submitted to THUD because he believed in her, was one that she had definitely not been looking for. She had been searching for a past, the feeling of innocent adoration that she had forgotten and truly missed. She had found a past alright but not the one she had been searching for.

The past lay at her feet intertwining with her present unwelcomingly, its contents scattered on the bed that she shared with her husband. There was a red feather stuck to a picture and she wondered the significance of it as she peeled it away. Behind the feather was her best-friend's smiling face, her body cut off below her shoulders but seemingly naked underneath white sheets. She peered at the picture closer and recognized the headrest behind Brooke Davis was hers, the same one that she was leaning against now. Realization dawning on her, she jumped off the bed, feeling sick to her stomach.

As the knowledge that her best-friend and her husband were having an affair sunk in, Peyton Sawyer Scott lowered herself to the floor and brought up her knees to her chest. Her world had just crumbled but she would not allow herself to cry. How could she, when really she had brought this upon herself.

* * *

For most of her high school years, Peyton Sawyer had been confident in the knowledge that Lucas Scott was in love with her. She saw it in his every look, the way his eyes followed her whenever she entered a room to the way he tensed when she was near as if it was painful for him not to be touching her.

At first the intensity of his feelings had scared her and then they had warmed her. Lucas Scott's love had become a constant in Peyton Sawyer's life, one that without realizing it she had come to depend on, to need, to crave. She hadn't really realized it until he had gotten together with her fiery brunette best-friend for the second time.

He'd dated her best-friend before, after she had turned him down, but then they had ended up breaking her heart when they had started kissing behind her back. Peyton had given Brooke her blessing to date Lucas the second time saying, "I won't make out with him this time," and when she'd said the words she had meant them. When Lucas and Brooke had finally found their way to each other again, Peyton saw that something had changed and suddenly she didn't know whether she could keep her word to the girl she had promised never to hurt again.

It was in the way that he no longer looked at her; his eyes did not follow her when she entered or left a room and his body definitely did not tense up when she was near. He hugged her freely, joked with her freely, any intensity of feelings void from his actions or his words. It was Brooke Davis that his eyes now followed. It was her who now made him ache with desire. And as Peyton watched him with Brooke, she noted that it was more than just the intensity that had been there with her that was there with Brooke.

Brooke did not just make Lucas want her, she made him smile so that all of his teeth showed and his eyes shone a bright blue.

It began slowly, a nagging need to be near Lucas without Brooke around. It grew as her life collapsed around her: another dead mother, an absentee father, a high school shooting. Through it all Lucas Scott was around for it and the need to be near him grew. She was sure that if anyone could save her, it was him. Sure his eyes did not shine for her but he was always saving her. That had to mean something, didn't it?

When Brooke ended things with the blond haired boy and he started dating her, Peyton finally felt right; found; safe. It didn't matter that she didn't see Lucas' teeth as much anymore or that his eyes seemed a dimmer blue now.

* * *

They got married at 23.

When he had asked her to meet him for dinner one Friday night, Peyton was sure it was the end. They were both living in L.A., him trying to write and get published and her trying to make her way up the music executive ladder. It should have been a dream but it was far from. Fights were becoming more frequent as she felt Lucas getting more distant. Brooke Davis was her best friend again and also living in L.A. making life work as a clothing designer.

It had been a year since Brooke had entered Peyton and Lucas's life again after having been absent since high school. They had all been estranged in high school after the Brooke and Lucas breakup followed by the Peyton and Lucas relationship and Brooke had taken off right after graduation, not keeping in touch with either of them. A year ago, Lucas had run into her at a work party and invited her to visit him and Peyton. She had and they had all seemingly picked up their friendships with ease.

Except this time Brooke was supposedly Peyton's best-friend but seemed to be much more Lucas' as he and her spent a lot of time together while Peyton tried to climb the corporate ladder, scoping out new bands late into the night. Peyton had once made an off-handed comment about the new relationship between Lucas and Brooke. Lucas had fixed stone cold blue eyes on her. "Don't tell me you're jealous. That's so high school." Feeling foolish, she had laughed uneasily. "Of course not."

Subject closed.

Eights months after the return of Brooke Davis, Lucas and Peyton had begun to fight in a way they never had before. It wasn't loud angry fighting. It was more passive agressive; words unspoken, tears unspilled, spaces in bed where there hadn't been any before. Lucas pulling away, Peyton trying to reel him in. They were both unhappy but Brooke, Brooke was always smiling. And when Brooke was around, Lucas smiled more too. Peyton pretended not to notice. Because when Brooke was around, she smiled more as well.

At 23, after a particularly bad fight which this time had escalated into loud yelling, Peyton arguing that Lucas didn't love her enough, show it enough and Lucas yelling back that he couldn't always be expected to reassure Peyton of his love just because people were always leaving her, he had done just that. Walked out the door without a backward glance and not returning until he called her the next day asking her to meet him for dinner. She told him she couldn't do it anymore, felt like he didn't love her anymore but hesitated before she told him exactly why she thought that his heart wasn't hers. He wiped away her sole tear, got down on one knee and proposed. She looked into his blue eyes, eyes that in a distant past had been like a window but which she now couldn't read. Her mind was screaming at her to say no but his hand was outstretched in front of her and that had to mean he loved her, didn't it?

She said yes.

When he smiled at her answer his teeth didn't show.

Brooke did not return her calls for two weeks.

* * *

Peyton was still on the floor, all things Brooke still on the bed, when Lucas came home. He took one look at her then at the bed and was immediately beside her on the floor apologizing. She half heard him repeatedly say he was sorry and something about how it was not what it looked like and she squeezed her eyes shut trying to go back to a time when she had been all he had wanted, a time when Brooke Davis naked in the back seat of his car meant nothing to him simply because she wasn't Peyton Sawyer. It was a lifetime ago but Peyton tried to remember that time and cling to that because the Lucas Scott beside her had long ago stopped obsessing about her, right around the time she had started obsessing about him.

"How could you do this?" she whispered.

Lucas shook his head and gripped at his hair. "I'm so sorry." Not knowing what to say, he hadn't answered the question.

Peyton stood up, shaking legs and knees and began to throw things of his in a bag. From the floor, Lucas watched her warily but made no move to stop her. When she was done, she threw the bag at him with all her might. "Get out," her voice was even, cool while inside she felt like she might have a heart attack.

Lucas flinched when the bag hit him but got up, repeated an "I'm sorry" and made a move towards her. She backed away from him and he sighed, took his bag and walked out. Only after did he leave did Peyton let the tears she hadn't allowed herself to cry rush out like a waterfall. The fact that he hadn't tried to fight for her was one last twist of the knife.

Peyton could not imagine a life without Lucas. Ever since he had declared to her that he wanted everything with her, he hadn't known it and she hadn't then either but she had given a part of him that she would never get back.

Crying alone in a house that had once been a home, Peyton knew that if Lucas had begged her forgiveness she would have given it to him. Because people were always leaving her and Lucas had been the one constant that stayed. Even if it was just his body and his heart was somewhere else, he stayed.

* * *

_The clothes in the wardrobe_

_**Just send them to me**_

_There's bills here for you_

_**That's cause nothing is free**_

_We build up with things_

_To make us who we want to be_

Lucas had been gone for a month. A month that had confirmed to Peyton that life with Lucas was better than life without Lucas. He hadn't called for the first two weeks but Brooke had. She had left Peyton many messages saying she was worried about her, apologizing, asking Peyton to understand and then finally saying that she would give Lucas up if Peyton would just answer the phone and talk to her. Peyton listened to all of Brooke's messages fuming with rage. Who was Brooke to offer to give up Lucas? He wasn't hers to give up, he was Peyton's husband.

Later after the anger settled, Peyton grudgingly admitted to herself what she had known all along: ever since Lucas had started dating Brooke again in junior year, he had been Brooke's: mind, body and soul. Brooke had given Lucas to Peyton by breaking up with him and this affair had just proved how easily she could take him back. Lucas loved her, Peyton was sure of it, just not how he loved Brooke.

When the knowledge sunk in and the edges of the twisting knife dulled, Peyton almost called Brooke. She was desperately lonely and for so long there had been Brooke her best-friend and Lucas the love of her life. The day that she was about to call Brooke, however, Lucas called. She was in the shower and missed the call but when she saw his number on her cell phone, she decided against calling Brooke. Making up with her meant that she had given up on Lucas. Because there was no way that her and Brooke could continue to be friends if Lucas was with either one of them. Peyton had always loved Lucas more so she deleted Brooke out of her cell phone, waited a day and then called Lucas.

Their conversations started about what to do with his stuff, the house. Peyton was left shaking with every conversation they had, to her this could not be the end. It was her who suggested that he come and pick up his things. He had said that maybe it would be best if she sent them to him. She countered that it would be better if he came by, something about closure. Her heart lifted when he finally agreed. There was a part now of her that hated Lucas but the other part, the one that loved him and needed him was so much bigger that Peyton could not help but want to see him one last time.

It started off innocently enough. He came by once and while the tension was thick at first, it gradually eased when Lucas realized that Peyton wasn't going to incinerate him. She wanted to ask him whether he was staying with Brooke but would not let herself seem so desperate. Unable to take all his things in one trip, Lucas was forced to come back a second time.

Standing in the doorway of their bedroom in a pale yellow sun dress, her hair wild and curly like it had been in high school, Peyton felt Lucas watching her and she knew that their story wasn't over yet. When she sat down on the bed next to him, she had an idea of what would happen but she thought, "What the hell? One last time."

Later as they lay, their bodies tangled in a mess of sheets and limbs, Lucas kissed her head, her nose and then her lips and asked for another chance. She fought against herself, the part that hated Lucas and hated this girl that she had become: this wimpy girl willing to give up her self-respect for a guy who didn't completely love her. But Peyton wasn't good at being alone and besides he was here with her, that had to mean something didn't it.?

Eventually she gave in. Things were going to be different this time.

* * *

Three years later and some things were different. They had a baby now, a beautiful baby girl: Haley Sawyer Scott, after his best-friend and now hers as well. Other things, the biggest things, had stayed disappointedly the same.

It was 1am and Lucas was yet to come home. Just like every other night for the past few months since Haley had been born, Peyton would stay up waiting for him. He would come in, apologize and make an excuse about work, and depending on how tired she was, she would either pretend to be sleeping and not acknowledge his presence or she would threaten to leave and bring about a fight. Either way, in the end she always stayed.

Peyton was no longer even sure that she was in love with him or just with the dream he had led her to believe at sixteen, one in which he would always be in love with her. That dream was far from reality but people had come in and out of her life and despite everything, Lucas had stayed.

Lucas, she was pretty sure, stayed for the dream he had promised her as well: this fairy tale love that was now just make believe. She an artist and he a writer, Lucas and Peyton had both spent their lives in make belief, creating alternate universes to hide from the real one. At 26 they should have grown out of that but in their marriage they stayed in this alternate universe. One where Lucas Scott was solely in love with Peyton Sawyer Scott and there was no such person as Brooke Davis.

She wasn't strong enough to leave on her own and he wasn't strong enough to let her go.

In another corner of the city, the one person who could put an end to the whole mess wasn't strong enough to fight for what was in everything but name already hers.

_He doesn't want her but he just won't let her go_

_She started breaking but she still won't let it show_


End file.
